Child sexual abuse in the U.S. is at epidemic levels. More than 60,000 children are reported to have been abused every year, outnumbering those killed by guns or cars. Those who survive are often left not only with physical wounds, but also with psychological wounds that may never heal. These wounds exact both a profound personal and social cost. Much attention has been focused on the issue of child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church, and rightly so. Allegations of abuse by clergy and church workers as well as cover-ups and bureaucratic mishandling by bishops, dioceses and religious orders have caused terrible pain for survivors of such abuse and their families. It also has resulted in disillusionment on the part of ordinary Catholics. The cost of this abuse and its aftermath totals more than $4 billion so far, according to the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection. While the Catholic Church continues to struggle with this legacy, it has instituted a wide variety of steps to improve oversight, identify abusers and protect children. One under-reported fact from the recent, highly publicized Pennsylvania grand jury report is that for all of the many horrors it identified, the good news was that it appeared to document the decline in current cases. As Jesuit Father Tom Reese told America magazine in its Dec. 24 issue, every one of the accused priests in the report was either deceased or had been removed from ministry, “and only two had been accused of abusing a child in the last 20 years.” During these same 20 years, however, an estimated 1.2 million children in this country were abused nationwide in schools, organizations, churches and families. Understanding the plague of sexual abuse in this country means going beyond the immediate headlines and understanding what experts are saying about this scourge. It also means looking not only at the Catholic Church but at all institutions and societal structures where abuse can take place. So far, no grand jury, congressional committee or law enforcement organization has undertaken a broad societal investigation of what is happening to children in public schools as well as private, in sports and other youth-oriented programs and organizations, in pediatric facilities and perhaps most common, in families. (In Australia, a Royal Commission investigation of child abuse in nongovernmental organizations took five years.) “Sexual victimization of children is a serious and pervasive issue in society. It is present in families, and it is not uncommon in institutions where adults form mentoring and nurturing relationships with adolescents, including schools and religious, sports and social organizations,” said the John Jay report issued in May 2011 on “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010.” “If you want to talk about sexual abuse of minors, you’re talking about families, foster care programs, public schools,” New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan said in a recent Sirius XM interview. “You’re talking about organizations, every religion, you’re talking about public schools, it is a societal, cultural problem. There is no occupation that is freed from it.” He made the remarks in late January after the New York Legislature passed a measure to ease the statute of limitations on civil abuse cases. The state’s Catholic bishops agreed to support the bill after it was broadened to include not just the Catholic Church but public institutions. Over the years, highly touted organizations such as the Boy Scouts, U.S.A. Gymnastics and Penn State have had abuse scandals. Often such organizations are accused of behavior similar to what the Catholic Church has been accused of: denials, cover-ups, relocation of predators and unwillingness to tell authorities. In July 2018, shortly before the Pennsylvania grand jury report was released, a team of Chicago Tribune reporters turned out a special series on abuse in Chicago’s public-school system: “Betrayed: Chicago schools fail to protect students from sexual abuse and assault, leaving lasting damage.” “Whether the sexual attacks were brutal rapes, frightening verbal come-ons or ‘creepy,’ groping touches, the students often felt betrayed by school officials and wounded for years,” the paper reported. “When students summoned the courage to disclose abuse, teachers and principals failed to alert child welfare investigators or police despite the state’s mandated reporter law,” it said. The Tribune is hardly the first media outlet to examine abuse in the nation’s public schools. In December 2016, USA Today published its own series. “Despite decades of repeated sex abuse scandals –– from the Roman Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts to scores of news media reports identifying problem teachers –– America’s public schools continue to conceal the actions of dangerous educators in ways that allow them to stay in the classroom,” it said. USA Today’s network of media outlets conducted a yearlong investigation and “found that education officials put children in harm’s way by covering up evidence of abuse, keeping allegations secret and making it easy for abusive teachers to find jobs elsewhere.”